Early on in the ingenious collaboration between Second City and Hubbard Street Dance, Procol Harum's counterculture hymn permeates Chicago's Harris Theater as actors and dancers assemble in rows of folding chairs facing the audience.

When the project was announced, the company described the idea as "inspired by Marc Chagall's famed American Windows." That left Cerrudo with the challenge of creating an important and large-scale work. If it was a measure of Hubbard Street's confidence in him.

You could definitely say that Penny Saunders and Pablo Piantino have had a front row seat for the making of some of the most important choreography of the last decade, except that if you did, it would actually be a pretty serious understatement.

One of the most revolutionary developments in the art of choreography occurred gradually and unnoticed, as the ability to select music from multiple sources, and reconstruct that music into what is essentially a new structure, became widely available through software-based edititng.

He's back. After months of tending to his prior duties with other orchestras, Gustavo Dudamel has returned to the Los Angeles Philharmonic for a festival of American music, or, better said, music of the Americas.